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We have accomplished much in our study of God and Science. We have learned the importance of trusting God's Word over current scientific theory that will eventually change. We have learned that God created the universe in such a way that it will never get beyond faith -- either believing in science's current theories or the Word of God. We have learned that God created a mature earth so that no matter what science "discovers next" the Word of God will always be true. As Paul wrote "let God be true and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4). That's a good motto to live by in every area of our lives; not just creation!

In this final lesson, we turn to a Biblical and scientific example of the Flood of Noah's day. There has never been anything like that event, nor will there ever be in the future because God has promised that it would be so. As we read in our text in 2 Peter 3, the next time that God destroys the earth it will be by fire.

The earth before the Flood was a vastly different place than it is today. Here are six key differences to understand:

1. Before the Flood, man and all animals were vegetarians.

This is a scriptural fact. The Genesis account of the sixth day reads:

Death among the animals and humans did not enter into the world until Adam's sin (Romans 5:12). Of course, plant life would die and regenerate much the same as it does today, but plants do not have consciousness, blood, working muscle tissue, or breath and was created on the third day separate from the animals. The reference to death is about man and animal life. All were vegetarians until AFTER the Flood. When Noah stepped off the ark, God told him:

So before the Flood even the largest animals were vegetarians and animals were not inherently afraid of man. Understanding these principles helps explain a lot, for example, why the two frogs didn't eat the two flies on the ark or why the grizzly bear didn't eat Noah!

2. Before the Flood, it never rained.

This is also a scriptural fact. The Bible says:

This proves that the earth before the Flood was very different than the earth today. With no rain and a continual mist each day from the ground, there would be no erosion, no droughts, no deserts, and no wasteland. The entire world would have been irrigated by God's "built-in sprinkler system!" Hebrews states:

One of the things that Noah was warned of that had never been seen was rain. The rainbow which occurs naturally after rain, was a new phenomenon to Noah and his family, and was the sign of the covenant that God made with him to never destroy the earth with water.

3. Before the Flood, extreme seasons did not exist.

Although a type of seasons are mentioned in Genesis 1:14, the concepts of cold, heat, summer, and winter are not mentioned in the Bible until after Noah got off the ark:

4. Before the Flood, there was a warm, uniform climate probably because of the "vapor canopy."

We know this because before Adam and Eve sinned, they were naked and did not need any type of coat to keep them warm from a winter. After they sinned, clothing became a necessity for modesty only. The fossil record shows that animals and tropical plants and fruit trees and such existed at one time all over the world including places such as Greenland and Antarctica. That would mean for example that Canada would have been just as warm and sunny as southern Florida, year around before the Flood. All of this was probably a result of a "vapor canopy" that covered the earth at this time. As we learned before, when God created the world, He divided the waters in a unique way:

This water "above the dome of the sky" would have been in the form of gas and vapor. Scientists say that such a covering in the outer atmosphere or the earth would have several effects on earth.

1. It would block harmful UV rays and Gamma rays from the sun and would have kept the early humans from the severe sun burn that you and I experience today. This explains why Adam and Eve could walk around naked in the sun all day and not be like boiled lobsters.

2. It would produce a "greenhouse effect" raising the temperatures of the atmosphere just as the glass of a greenhouse tends to raise the temperature of the interior air. This would have resulted in a uniformly warm climate just as the Bible teaches existed before the Flood and would have allowed tropical style plants to grow all over the earth even places that now are covered in ice. Simply put, the entire globe would have been abundantly covered with vegetation.

3. It would have prevented severe winds, storms, and seasonal variation. Our modern day thunderstorms, hurricanes, and such are produced from cold air movements colliding with warmer air fronts. With a uniform air temperature, things would have been much calmer.

4. The year long growing season would have allowed plants, fruits, to grow much larger than they currently grow. With so much food readily available, animals would have grown much larger as well.

5. The atmospheric pressure would have increased slightly making earth a healthier place to live. Too much increase in pressure can be detrimental, but scientists have long noted that healing takes place much more rapidly in slightly increased pressure chambers such as deep sea diving bells. Studies also show that breathing oxygen while in a pressure chamber with a slightly higher pressure than we currently have has therapeutic effects such as restoring memory, increasing energy, and adding "spunk" to older men and women.

Understanding the vapor canopy's effects on the earth before the Flood helps to shed light on two other major differences between the world before the Flood an modern day earth.

5. Before the Flood, men lived much longer than they do now.

Go read Genesis chapter 5 sometime and look at how long some of those men lived before the Flood. Five hundred years and six hundred years of age were average life spans back then. The oldest man who ever lived, Methuselah, lived to be 969 years old (Genesis 5:27). When you compare these ages with the genealogies of Genesis chapter 11 after the Flood, you will find that the Flood had a great effect on the life span of humanity. After the flood the life spans were very similar to what they still are today.

The longevity before the Flood was a result of the vapor canopy's effects on the earth. The canopy's shielding of harmful radiation from the sun increased life dramatically. Combine that with the absence of the sicknesses that inevitably come with the changing of dramatic seasons today and the increased healing properties and energy of the slightly increased air pressure, and it's no wonder that so many people lived much longer today. When the vapor canopy collapsed in the Flood, as we will see, so did those effects on the earth and so did life spans after the Flood are much shorter!

6. Dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Dinosaurs did exist. The bones of dinosaurs have been found in all the continents except Antarctica. Some evidently weighed as much as 100 tons. An adult bull elephant today can consume 300-600 pounds of fodder daily, and so a dinosaur that was 15 times larger would probably have had to consume 15 times more food! The Bible states that all land animals, including dinosaurs were created on the sixth day of creation with humanity and that all land animals including dinosaurs were vegetarians before the Flood. For dinosaurs to exist, then they would have had to have large amounts of vegetation readily available as existed on the earth before the Flood and the vapor canopy collapsed. Scientists know that something catastrophic happened to change the earth in such a way that eventually wiped out the dinosaurs. What they can't explain, however, is why such an event -- usually presented as a comet or big asteroid hitting the earth -- didn't kill all the other types of life as well, and why some smaller dinosaurs -- what we call today as lizards and crocodiles and such -- didn't die also.

The demise of the dinosaurs fits perfectly with the changes of the earth after the Flood of Noah's time and although dinosaurs certainly survived for some time after the event, eventually the lack of ample and ready vegetation, and the change of atmospheric pressure as a result of the collapse of the vapor canopy caused the large vegetarians to die off. Those dinosaurs that did become meat eaters after the Flood then lost large vegetarian animals to consume and became extinct as well.

The other side to this is that with the collapse of the vapor canopy during the Flood, the atmospheric pressure dropped to it's current levels. Even evolutionists admit that for some of the large, extinct reptiles to fly as obviously they did, that the air pressure would have had to be slightly increased, and that their would be no way for these creatures to fly today. For the extremely large creatures on land to move with any agility, they would have needed the help from the slightly increased air pressure as well in much the same sense that the increased pressure in the water of a swimming pool allows you to pick someone up that you ordinarily couldn't handle. When the vapor canopy collapsed in the Flood, the flying "dinosaurs" would lose their ability to fly and the larger land creatures would have become extremely slow, both factors leading to their extinction.

Since we're talking about the dinosaurs, let me point out a few more facts about them that you may not be aware of.

The term dinosaur means "terrible lizard" and was coined in 1841 by Sir Richard Owen several centuries after the King James Version was translated. This fact and the influence that the KJV has had on subsequent translations is the main reason that the word "dinosaur" does not occur in the Bible. There are, however, some words in the Bible that very possibly could refer to the dinosaurs. Here they are:

1. Tannim -- most commonly translated in the KJV as "dragon." It is used at least twenty-five times in the Old Testament. Here's a sampling of the references: Genesis 1:21; Deuteronomy 32:33; Psalm 74:13-14; 91:13; 148:7; Isaiah 27:1; 51:9; and Jeremiah 51:34.

2. Behemoth -- means a big and gigantic beast. God's description of the plant-eating behemoth is found in Job 40:15-24. Some people have tried to say that this is a description of a hippopotamus or elephant, but they overlook the fact that God says in verse 17 "he moveth his tail like a cedar..." Neither a hippo or an elephant has a tail that can be even slightly compared to the stately and big cedar tree. It's very likely that God was describing a large, land dinosaur such as a brontosaurus. If so, then these accounts in Job are the only actual description of a dinosaur in the world written by someone that has actually seen one.

3. Leviathan -- This is another type of creature described by God in Job. The Leviathan was a huge sea creature that was impractical to hook or harpoon. God spends all of the 41st chapter of Job describing this magnificent creature. It is possible that God was speaking of a large marine dinosaur such as the plesiosaurus.

Keep in mind that other than the possible Biblical accounts of dinosaurs that we have just mentioned, all we know about dinosaurs are from fossils and bones and footprints. From bones, some things can be learned such as the size of the creature and the angle at which they stood and walked. The things that CANNOT be determined from examining bones and footprints are such things as skin color, skin texture, flesh shape of small parts such as ears, eyes, and muscles that rot away. You also can't tell whether or not an animal was warm-blooded or cold-blooded, nor if a creature was meat-eating or vegetarian by it's bones. There is no mention that God changed the teeth of man or the animals when He allowed meat eaters after the Flood and even today, all humans share the same type of teeth and yet many choose to be vegetarians. All of these characteristics while grabbing our imagination, making good movies and pictures, and inspiring kids everywhere in story books, are just fiction and people's imagination from looking at a bunch of bones. Barney was something invented in the mind's of humans as was Jurassic Park.

Also keep in mind that fossils have been found with human bones right beside the dinosaurs bones in places such as the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and a human footprint within a dinosaur footprint has been found in Texas. The Bible claims that all land creatures, including dinosaurs were created on the sixth day of creation at the same time that humanity was created. Therefore man and dinosaurs had to coexist. Remember though, that before the Flood all of these large creatures were vegetarian and after the Flood they had an inherent fear of man just as the grizzly bear and deer of today usually try to avoid human contact. The Bible makes it very clear that the animals that we call dinosaurs today could have existed at the time of Noah and gives very probable reasons for their demise, something science has yet to do.

Let me also point out that we have fewer dinosaur bones that have been found than most people think. The majority of models that you see in the major museums of the world are plaster creations and not actual complete and assembled bones. To be specific, the vast majority of the skeletons that you would see in the large natural history museums in Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and even the thirty-foot tall Barosaurus that greets you at the American Museum of Natural History in New York is entirely a plaster model not ancient bones. To quote one evolutionist, Bill Bryson:

It's really a miracle that we even have fossils at all. Normally when an animal dies, it decomposes or is eaten by scavengers. For an animal to become a fossil it must be buried suddenly with sedimentary rock so that it does not have time to decompose and become that grease spot on the road. What this means is that fossils are formed by floods. When flood waters sweep over an area, they carry sedimentary rock around and deposit it in various places. If a large amount of plant and animal life is trapped deep beneath the surface, then the pressure of the earth changes them into what we call "fossil fuels" such as oil. If they are closer to the surface, then they form the preserved imprint that we call fossils. Remember fossils of dinosaurs have been found on every continent except Antarctica which testifies that the animals were once everywhere and were covered by floods in those regions.

All of this points to a world-wide Flood just as the Bible says happened. Evolutionists, for example, have problems explaining why such a large amount of dinosaurs would have been huddled together in one place to produce such large deposits of fossils such as the ones found in Utah. The Flood easily explains this, because no doubt as the Flood water rose, animals naturally scurried to higher ground amassing on the highest ridges until the water finally rose over them. In the cases where the great upheaval in the earth produced massive waves, some of these groups of animals were buried by sedimentary rock so suddenly that would eventually produce the huge amounts of oil pockets throughout the earth that we have today. When you gas your car up remember that the fact that we have gasoline from fossil fuels is proof that Noah's Flood really happened and that large amounts of large animals were buried beneath it's sediment. A few that were not buried as deep, such as the ones in Utah produced the great fossil beds that we have found today. Which brings us to our next section:

As we read in our text, the Bible plainly teaches that the entire earth was covered in the Flood of Noah's day. Some people, even preachers (!), have tried to say that the Genesis Flood was just in that local area but the Bible clearly contradicts this:

"Fifteen cubits" is about 22 feet. That means that the waters covered the highest mountains by that much to allow the bottom of the ark to clear the land. That's a lot of water which -- again according to our text -- came from two sources:

The windows of heaven obviously refers to the vapor canopy collapsing on the earth. This large amount of water would account for a rain that lasted for "forty days" (Genesis 7:11-12). Authorities have estimated that if all the water vapor currently in the atmosphere would fall as rain, there would still only be about a two inch sheath of water over the earth. It's obvious then, that something else had to contribute if the Flood was to cover the highest land by 22 feet and the scriptures say that "the fountains of the deep broke up." Simply put, the ocean's deep basins are much deeper than the highest mountains are tall. It has been estimated that if the earth were completely flat, then the water of the oceans would cover all dry land by a depth of 7500 feet! It's obvious that in addition to the rain from the vapor canopy above, God also raised the sea basins. There is scriptural proof of this. For example the Psalmist wrote:

God made the Flood waters to recede by once again lowering the basins of the oceans and restoring the "fountains of the deep." The interesting point about all of this is if God did lower the mountains and raise the basins of the oceans, then He would have had to been careful to do it in exact precision with each other because anything rotating speeds up or slows down depending on the mass extended to the side. For example, if you are sitting on stool that spins and you stick your arms out, you will slow down. If you pull your arms in you will speed up. This is precisely how figure skaters control their spin rates. For the spin of the earth to remain constant, God would have had to lower the mountains in a direct proportion to the amount and time that He was raising the basins of the ocean. Incredibly, the scriptures say that God did exactly this with great precision:

All of this works together to prove that the Bible declares that the Flood was world-wide and not just a local event. Here are some other things that prove a world-wide Flood:

1. God said that it was the end of "all flesh" and that "all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died" (Genesis 7:22).

2. The worldwide nature of the Flood is declared in every other scripture in the Bible.

3. Peter declared that only eight souls were saved by water (1 Peter 3:20).

4. Peter also declared that "the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water" (2 Peter 3:6).

5. If the Flood was local, then the ark was ridiculously large for it's purpose.

6. Three times in scripture, God promised never again to smite every living thing by a flood (Genesis 8:21; 9:11, 15). Why would God promise to never do something again that never happened in the first place?

7. Nearly all of the great mountain areas of the world have been found to have marine fossils near their peaks. The only thing that could have caused this was if the mountains had at one time been under water and then raised up from their lower state. This perfectly fits the Flood pattern of the Bible.

8. Fossilization, as we have talked about, requires a sudden burial. Coal seams, oil fields, and natural gas deposits all testify to the global nature of the Flood.

9. Most of the rocks on the earth's surface are sedimentary which are the type carried by flood waters and that were formed by heavy rain and the resulting erosion.

10. Just about every civilization or culture in the world has a Flood myth or story in their history. Of the two hundred plus that have been collected by anthropologists today, all state the basic concepts of a world-wide flood that destroyed all man and animals except for the few people who boarded a vessel of safety. Such stories would only exist in such remote cultures had the Flood of Genesis actually occurred globally!

11. If the Flood was just local then it would have been much easier for Noah and the animals to just walk to safety in the time it took to build the boat!

The ark is the only ship in the Bible where we are given exact dimensions. It was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high (Genesis 6:15). A cubit is the equivalent of 18 inches to us today. That means that the ark of Noah in feet was 450 x 75 x 45 or 1, 518,750 cubic feet of space. To be able to visualize this, let's convert it something somewhat more familiar. That would be the equivalent of 569 modern box cars. It's deck area would be more than 100,000 square feet or slightly bigger than twenty NBA basketball courts placed side by side. The ark had one window, looking skyward, one door which only God could shut, and was three stories.

Noah was to bring two of every unclean "kind of animal" and seven of every "clean kind" such as sheep and goats. "Clean" means those animals that were suitable for sacrifice. After Noah stepped off the boat, all of those seventh animals were sacrificed to God for thanksgiving leaving three pairs of clean animals on the earth. This was so that man would always have the ability to give God a blood sacrifice and foreshadowed the importance of Calvary! It's interesting to note that the seventh sacrificial animal was without a partner and that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, died without ever having married! We'll save the other spiritual parallels for another lesson and another time.

All Noah had to do was to bring two of each kinds on the ark. In other words, he had to bring "two dogs" and NOT "two poodles, two cocker spaniels, two bull dogs, etc..." Science has proven that all the species of say dog have come as a result of selective breeding. God designed it that way for a purpose, and it's called "microevolution." Macroevolution which says that one "kind" can evolve into another totally different kind is a theory that has never been observed by human beings.

Also realize that Noah did not have to bring the species that can survive in water like fish, lobsters, and turtles. That would mean that there were about 17,500 kinds on the earth which would result in approximately 50,000 animals on board the ark. Only a small percentage of the land animals on earth are big and the average size of the animals, even with the biggest animals included would be no greater than your average sheep. That's assuming that Noah took full size elephants, dinosaurs, etc... It's very possible that God brought him young versions of these animals; ones that were not yet full-grown. To get back to thinking in terms that we can visualize, if the average size of the animals was a common sheep and a modern day boxcar holds 240 sheep, then 208 boxcars would have been required to house the animals that would have been on Noah's ark. It was the equivalent of 569 modern box cars and so the animals would have only taken up about 36.5% of the ark's capacity. To put it another way, the ark was large enough to have the animals and their food on two of the stories and have the entire third story for Noah's family and their food. The smell might have been bad, but things were not near as cramped as people think.

Keep in mind also that God brought the animals to Noah and caused them to come to him at the appropriate time and so God was certainly helping Noah. Also, all of them were vegetarian so only plants and hay needed to be stored as food and there was no danger of them eating each other or the humans. Furthermore, Genesis 6:14 indicates that the stories were divided somehow into "rooms" which could have functioned as stalls and such for some of the animals and the God who caused Adam to go to sleep to pull out a rib and form Eve could certainly have caused some of the animals, particularly the larger one to hibernate.

A few years ago, Commander Lee Touchberry of the U.S. Navy took the ark's dimensions and put them into the Navy's computerized programs. Calculations showed that the dimensions of the ark were a perfect match with the Navy's ideal ship dimension ratio. This means that the ark was very ably designed for it's purpose not only in capacity but in ratio and all of this proves that not only is the story true, but that God was indeed the designer! It would have been impossible for Moses, the writer of Genesis, to come up with such perfect dimensions on his own. It's obvious that the God who carefully designed the universe was also the creator of the ark of Noah's day.

The Flood brought great changes in the earth. After the protective vapor canopy collapsed into the precipatal system that we know today as evaporation and rain, life spans of humans and animals became much shorter. The seasons became more pronounced and the poles of the earth, which receive much less direct sunlight than the equatorial territories, froze over. Indeed some of this freezing would have taken place instantly as the vapor canopy collapsed which explains the frozen wooly mammoths and other animals trapped beneath the ice in mint condition that have been discovered. The dinosaurs slowly died off because of the changes of the earth and the lack of vegetation compared to before the Flood. Even in Job's time, there were some of these creatures still living and there may be some today in the depths of the oceans that we have not discovered yet. That's not as improbable as it sounds considering that humanity has only been to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean once and that for only a short time in a primitive instrument combined with the fact that there are species of animals like the giant squid which we know exists because of their bodies washing up on shores and their parts being found in the bellies of whales but which no human being has ever actually seen alive! The smaller dinosaurs that survived are called now by their respective names such as lizard, alligator, etc...

God promised Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with water, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention that once again God will purge the earth. But this time -- according to our text in Peter -- it will be with fire. From the fire that will consume this earth, will come a new heaven and a new earth filled with wonders from God for His people. The only ones who will get to inhabit such a gloryland will be those who were ready and Spirit-filled at Jesus' coming, the church. In Peter's own words:

2 Peter 3:10-11 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

Let these lessons spur you to endeavor to be ready for Christ at His coming!